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Product Review: Contour RollerMouse

It’s estimated that the average professional clicks their mouse 1,000-1,500 times a day. Every time we reach for a mouse, we shift our weight ever so slightly, putting the tiniest bit of stress on our shoulders, which in turn pulls at our necks. When we repeat this reaching motion hundreds (if not thousands) of times a day, it’s no wonder that we can begin to experience pain. We can shift our keyboards, raise or lower our chairs, and set timers to take breaks, but there doesn’t seem to be much one can do to avoid reaching for that mouse, over and over again.

Well, here at Tripepi Smith, we are always striving to do things better. So when we learned about the Contour Design Ergonomic RollerMouse, we had to check it out. Tripepi Smith project manager April Dávila decided to take advantage of the RollerMouse free trial offer to see if it worked as well as the promotional material says it does. Here’s what she found.

The basic idea of the RollerMouse is to integrate the typical mouse functionality into the wrist pad of your existing keyboard. This way you keep your elbows tucked in nice and close to your body, where they should be for maximum comfort, and only move your hands forward and back a few inches as you switch from typing to navigating.

This works as well in practice as it does in theory. What’s more, the device has several other functions that are quite handy. You can easily integrate both hands, thereby lessening the work of you dominant hand significantly. You can click, again with either hand, by either pushing on the scroll bar, or clicking the separate left click button. There’s a button for right clicking and for double clicking, even for cutting and pasting. Lastly, once you get used to the rolling mouse bar, you can increase the sensitivity so that the smallest movement of your hand can send your cursor sailing across the screen. It’s very slick.

In the experience of our reviewer, there are three downsides. The first is mac compatibility. The right click, copy and paste buttons don’t seem to function on macs, even with separately downloaded software. Second, when one is typing, the scroll bar falls just under the heel of both hands. This has lead to the unintentional jumping of the cursor while typing, and more than a few typos. The better one’s overall posture, the less likely this is to occur, but even those of us concerned with ergonomics tend to drop our wrists from time to time. The third and biggest downside is the price. At roughly $200, it’s no small commitment.

Still, for anyone who has contended with an aching wrist or a stiff neck after a long day of work, our final verdict is this: it’s worth every penny. Our reviewer was frankly shocked at the difference it made in her day-to-day comfort. If you’re looking for a better ergonomic setup, we definitely recommend signing up for the 30-day free trial.